c. 2006 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) A new documentary about a Roman Catholic priest who sexually abused dozens of children during the 1970s and 1980s in Northern California points a damning finger at the church officials who failed to stop him.

Responsibility for defrocked priest Oliver O’Grady’s crimes, according to filmmaker Amy Berg, rises from the priest himself to Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony and even to Pope Benedict XVI.

“If he was in any other profession, he would be in jail,” Berg said of Mahony, who was O’Grady’s bishop in Stockton, Calif., from 1980 to 1985.

After serving seven years in prison for molesting two brothers, O’Grady, 61, was deported to his native Ireland in 2001, where he now lives. He has admitted to abusing at least 25 children. The priest’s victims, according to the film, range from a 9-month-old infant to a married woman.

Berg’s film, “Deliver Us From Evil,” features interviews with O’Grady, who says he “should have been removed” from ministry, as well as police reports and videotaped testimony from Mahony. Winner of the “best documentary” prize at the Los Angeles Film Festival, the film opens Friday (Oct. 13) in Los Angeles and New York, with a broader release to follow.

But Berg, a former television journalist, doesn’t tell the full story, according to Tod Tamberg, a spokesmam for the archdiocese of Los Angeles.

“It’s the assembly of information by Ms. Berg to achieve a predetermined outcome and she calls that a documentary,” Tamberg said. “She makes many errors and omits significant information that calls into question points she makes in her film.”

In particular dispute is O’Grady’s transfer to a parish in San Andreas, Calif., in 1984.

That year, O’Grady says in the film, he told a counselor that he had molested a 9-year-old boy. The counselor then reported the apparent abuse to the police. According to the film, no one from the Stockton diocese told police that O’Grady had previously admitted to molesting a child.

“I knew that the one in 1976 took place,” Monsignor James Cain, vicar general of the diocese of Stockton, says in a videotaped deposition shown in the documentary. “But I didn’t put the two together. One was a girl and it was inappropriate touching _ the other was a boy. I just didn’t hook them up in my mind.”

Berg’s film then presents an apparent police report, which says, in part, that “this unit was advised that the suspect will be transferred and will only be working with adults and away from any children.”

Instead, O’Grady was sent to San Andreas, where he was put in charge of a parish.

Though at the time O’Grady sent Mahony a letter thanking him for “all you have done for me,” in the new documentary the disgraced priest says that “I should have been removed and attended to.” Even a cursory look at his files, O’Grady says, would have “told him that this was not a one-time issue _ there were two prior situations that needed to be dealt with.”

But the film’s account leaves out critical details, according to Tamberg.

For instance, the Stockton police conducted a “full investigation,” including interviews with the alleged victim and the alleged victim’s mother, both of whom denied any abuse, Tamberg said.

After the police investigation, according to Tamberg, Mahony ordered O’Grady to undergo a psychiatric evaluation, which found that the priest had a “defect in maturation” but was not a danger or unfit for ministry.

“O’Grady was assigned to the parish in San Andreas because two retired priests who could help with his maturation lived there,” Tamberg said.

In 1985, Mahony was appointed archbishop (and later cardinal) in Los Angeles. In 1993, O’Grady pleaded guilty to molesting two boys. Five years later, a civil jury ordered the Stockton diocese to pay $30 million to the two boys; the figure was later reduced to $7.5 million.

Berg dismissed charges that her film amounts to “Catholic bashing,” preferring to call it “corporate-mentality bashing.”

“When you see a person who’s acting like a criminal, who’s got more power than any of us, it raises questions,” Berg said in an interview. “… I would like to see the people responsible for this crisis held accountable.”

KRE/JL END BURKE

Editors: To obtain photos of O’Grady and Berg and the movie poster, go to the RNS Web site at https://religionnews.com. On the lower right, click on “photos,” then search by subject or slug.